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Our use of cookies

Cookies are small files placed on your computer by websites that you visit. We do not collect personal information with cookies. We use them to:

  • remember settings you've saved
  • measure website usage
  • necessary: required for the operation of the website
  • functional: personalises the content and remembers your preferences
  • analytical performance: counts the number of visitors and how visitors move around the website (does not collect personal information)
  • social sharing: makes it easy for you to share content to social media channels

Types of cookies:

Third party websites: please be aware that if you access third party websites including social media platforms from this website you will be subject to their terms and conditions.

SQA Academy Cookies

Microsoft Active Directory Federated Services
Names of cookies

MSISSamlRequest

MSISAuth

SamSession

MSISAuthenticated

MSISLoopDetectionCookie

What they do

Active Directory Federation Services provides a means for managing online identities and providing single sign-on capabilities for users who access more than one service at a time. 

Why they are needed

Relevant for Qualifications Scotland secure users only.

It authenticates users with their usernames and passwords. Users can access some applications (i.e. Office 365, etc.) without being prompted to provide login credentials again.

Piwik (Matomo) Analytics
Names of cookies

_pk_id_1.e7c8

_pk_ses.1.e7c8

_pk_ref.1.e7c8

What they do

These web analytics cookies, provided by Matamo, are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site.

Why they are needed

The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.

Moodle
Names of cookies

MoodleSession 

MoodleSessionTest

What they do

The session cookie, set by Moodle, is used to maintain a user’s login while they navigate through series of pages on the site.

The session cookie, set by Moodle, is used to check if the ‘MoodleSession’ cookie is being created.

Others
Names of cookies

easyid-identity and easyid-identity-secure 

What they do

These persistent cookies are used to remember the username, so that when a visitor revisits the site, their username will be populated in the username field of the login page. 

Names of cookies

CSP2 (Content Security Policy)

What they do

Microsoft Edge security cookie. Loaded when any Windows machine accesses Academy site regardless of browser used. Allows web developers to lock down the resources that can be used by their web application, helping prevent cross-site scripting attacks that remain a common vulnerability on the web.

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Last modified: Thursday, 12 February 2026, 11:04 AM